Description
Karel Dedain was born in 1976 and built his first guitar in 1998. he lives and works in Gent, Belgium. The passion for playing flamenco guitar aroused his interest in guitar building. So he was trained at the CMB (Centrum voor Muziekinstrumentenbouw) by Walter Verreydt and has been building guitars full-time since 2006. Karel specializes mainly in building classical and flamenco guitars. He also teaches guitar making at the Centre for Musical Instrument Making in Puurs, Belgium, together with Walter Verreydt. Karel builds about ten guitars a year, all completely handmade. One of his specialties is shellac polishing. His philosophy in guitar building is not to reinvent everything, but to use the best ideas of historical guitar builders such as Torres, Garcia, Arias, and Hernandez to create beautiful instruments.
A few words from Karel Dedain about this very special instrument:
“I have always been a big fan of the smaller-bodied guitars by Vicente Arias. Through the years I saw many of them and made a fair number of Arias inspired guitars. I used a lot of different woods for back and sides in these copies (rosewood, satinwood, cypress,…) but I feel they are best when using cypress: it makes for a super-light guitar, but with a very warm and surprisingly “big” sound for such a small-bodied instrument. Like Arias, I have made this model using 5, 6, and 7 fan braces, and found it works best for me with 6 braces.
The final weight of these guitars is always somewhere around 950 grams, even when using rosewood. Since I had a lot more time in the workshop because of the Covid-19 lockdown, I decided to use this extra time to make a special instrument. The goal was to make the lightest guitar ever to have left the workshop, hopefully ending up somewhere around 900 grams, without losing the typical, charming sound character. I decided to make the back and sides out of a 15 years old log of Lebanon Cedar, a very fragrant wood that has properties comparable with cypress. Every piece (neck, fingerboard, bridge…) was selected on weight and quality to reduce weight to the minimum.
Aesthetics were kept simple, with strong white and black lines. The guitar was fitted with wooden pegs (it now has mechanical ‘Pegheds’). When finished, the guitar weighs approximately 825 grams without pegs, lighter than I had in mind, and the sound is just gorgeous. Mission completed!”
Luthier: | Karel Dedain |
Construction year: | 2020 |
Top: | Spruce |
Back and sides: | Lebanon Cedar |
Scale: | 650 mm |
Nut: | 50 mm |
Weight: | 975 grams |
Air resonance frequency: | G |